A South African company that has developed a system of using drones to collect and analyze tree data is about to open an office in the United States. Aerobotics said its first US office will shortly be opened in Los Angeles and is in the process of expanding their US-based staff as well. Additionally, Aerobotics' Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Burdock and Chief Platform Officer Stuart van der Veen will be moving from South Africa to the Los Angeles office to lead operations in the country, the company said. The Los Angeles office will also act as Aerobotics' global commercial headquarters.
The software powering data from the drones
While the drones form the hardware of the system, it's the software that is the brains behind Aerobotics' offering to growers. Once the drones gather observational data from the trees, the company's web application Aeroview takes over and maps the data for the grower.
"Aerobotics processes data from drone and satellite imagery through its proprietary artificial intelligence software to discover and analyze problems, pests and diseases affecting individual trees or vines on a farm," described Andrew Burdock. "In addition to health, the software also measures size, height and canopy volume. This type of highly accurate data empowers farmers to make better decisions in the field, so they can increase their yield and produce a more balanced crop.
"Using proprietary machine learning algorithms, Aerobotics is able to identify individual trees and help growers pinpoint those under stress," he continued. "This means that farmers can focus on areas that need the most attention and quickly make decisions grounded in precise data. Aerobotics’ web application Aeroview identifies individual trees and helps growers pinpoint those that are under stress. This means that farmers can focus on the areas that need the most attention. Aeroview Scout empowers growers to take their data into the field, targeting unhealthy trees, assessing damage and prescribing corrective action."
According to Aerobotics, the crops best suited to their technology are tree and vine crops including citrus, nuts, stone fruit and grapes, among others. "Aerobotics specifically helps tree and vine farmers, as its technology is able to deliver analytics and insights down to the individual tree and vine level," Burdock noted.
Aeroview app
Accompanying the software is an app that Aerobotics developed with the aim of helping farmers in the field with their inspections. Burdock described the app as working like a "Google Maps" for a tree farmer, describing how the app works once the data has been collected by the drone.
Aerobotics Co-Founder and CEO James Paterson
"The Aeroview app takes the farmer to trees which Aerobotics has identified as trees experiencing stress based on its relative health to the rest of the field," he said. "Once a farmer or scout gets to a pre-identified tree via the map generated by Aerobotics’ artificial intelligence, the farmer can take written or voice-recorded notes, identify the disease, pest or issue causing the problem in the app and take a picture of the problem. The App works and stores data offline and syncs the scouting mission insights and notes to the Aeroview web-portal once it connects to Wi-Fi to ensure the farm management loop is closed. Aeroview Scout is widely used by Aerobotics clients and has been a major benefit in record keeping for farmers and agriculture partners."
Recent developments
Aside from the opening up a US office, what else has Aerobotics been working on over the past 12 months? The company recently announced that it has expanded its Series A funding round from $2 million to $4 million. Additionally, Aerobotics also announced in November 2018 that it had processed its 10 millionth tree in its artificial intelligence and software. "Today, that number stands at more than 24 million and is increasing by 250,000 trees each day. This means that Aerobotics artificial intelligence is getting stronger and more accurate by the day," Burdock shared.
On the development side, he also noted that the company is now in the process of designing a yield management tool that will work within the Aeroview app with the aim of providing automated yield data to farmers. "Currently in development, the yield management tool that is being built within the Aeroview app allows farmers to select a yield sample within their orchard, capture fruit counts and fruit size and get a report on the size distribution and number of fruits. This yield management tool helps farmers make informed decisions on how much fruit to thin during the early stages of the season to optimize their yield when it is time to harvest. This technology will be commercially available in the United States at the beginning of the 2019 growing season."
For more information:
Zachary Giglio
Aerobotics
Ph: +1 (631) 745-7551
zachary.giglio@aerobotics.com
www.aerobotics.com